England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Upton Cressett St Michael

The Parish

The parish of Upton Cressett lies in southeastern Shropshire roughly 4 miles west of the market town of Bridgnorth. Upton Cressett sits roughly 2 miles southwest of the A458 road which links Bridgnorth with Much Wenlock. Upton Cressett is a tiny place with little more than church & hall as a notional centre, to the south of both sits the earthworks of its deserted medieval village, and within the wider parish a scatter of farms and cottages, the whole sits at the very end of a long and winding dead-end road that leads nowhere else. The parish would have been dominated by the estate of Upton Cressett Hall, a picturesque Elizabethan house sitting within a dry moat and home to the local Cressett family who donated their name to the parish. Like most Shropshire parishes Upton Cressett would have been a pastoral farming parish with cattle the main source of income. Upton Cressett is drained southeastwards by the infant Borle Brook which meets the Severn south of Highley, from there a long journey to the Bristol Channel follows. Upton Cressett is sited at 190 metres above the sea, it sits on the rising slopes of a hill that tops out at 231 metres at Upton Park. At just over 1,600 acres Upton Cressett was typically sized for a small pastoral parish, within that acreage, however, it would have barely supported 50 parishioners. In Domesday times Upton Cressett was a holding of one Reginald, a sheriff, and offered merely 6 ploughs and a small patch of woodland.

The Church

St Michael's church sits by its Hall at the western end of the long and winding lane leading to them from the A458 close to Morville. Like so many isolated small parish churches it has gone relatively untouched from the earliest times, here 12th century Norman Romanesque feature abound best illustrated by the chancel arch, the southern doorway and some remaining windows. The 13th century and Early English Gothic period saw the church extended by the addition of a northern aisle albeit this has since disappeared to leave the richly decorated Norman core. Pevsner dates the southern chancel chapel to the Decorated period of the early 14th century whilst the timber-framed southern porch is late medieval, probably Perpendicular. All is topped by the weather-boarded western bellcote and its leaden spire. The church sits on a tight bend hidden by trees, a rough grassy area is clearly used for off-road parking but traffic is a rare event. Once through the bordering trees the churchyard has few obstacles for the photographer.